Suffered from the same problem that Beyond the Gates had - a much better idea and the film ended up executing.

Numerous problems - not least with the two dimensional characters (identikit geek guy and girl) - but most of all it was that you ended up thinking 'why is any of this happening?' (Never explained) and ultimately - 'why should I care?' 4/10

Hopefully this will be the worst film I see at Frightfest this year. People keep describing it as being like Videodrome. Yeah, that's because it's ripping off Videodrome with an arcade game instead of violent movies. However where Videodrome had interesting things to say about violence and the media, this one has nothing to say about arcade games, and frustratingly ends up going nowhere, with most of the events being inexplicable. Just that on its own would be enough to make it a frustrating movie, but on top of that is added a terrible romance plot line. The leads have no chemistry and the relationship is both unbelievable and an obvious male-written fantasy: typical romantic scenes have the guy staring off into space while the girl talks about how much she loves retro video games and how cool he is, and oh, could she have his number so she can come and play games with him tomorrow... No. Just no.

The only good things are the weird sexualised scenes of flesh and technology merging, and Cronenberg has done those same scenes a lot better.

A cracking score and some great Cronenberg-style effects. I wanted to love this more than I did though, as the story felt underdeveloped and seemed to end with a whimper rather than a bang. I also saw the twist coming a mile off which probably didn't help with the ending's impact. Not entirely dissimilar to Beyond the Gates from last year, but definitely a lot weirder. 7.5 / 10

When doing 80s homage, there's a fine line between influence and pastiche and unfortunately this one crosses it where Beyond the Gates got it right. The bigger failing of this film though, is that it makes no sense! What it seems to boil down to is a man giving himself a kick up the posterior to get his life in order (which wasn't really in disorder anyway) by sending himself a circuit board from David Cronenberg's personal collection. When the tag line on your poster is 'Videodrome meets Altered States', you're giving yourself a very high bar to reach and unfortunately, this falls some way short. Points for having the lead actress use the phrase "stack of King's Quest floppies" though. 5/10

I enjoyed Beyond the Gates and felt well-disposed towards Graham Skipper and his cast... but this was just awful.

I didn't believe in the main characters or their relationship, the weirdness surrounding the game itself happened out of nowhere rather than being properly set up, the goopy, slimy Cronenbergisms were just silly and far too derivative. And when we got to the alternative "red" and "blue" endings, I didn't understand why the happy rewind-and-start-over option apparently "won" over the bad ending - they both seemed equally likely and just two of an infinite number of possible outcomes. All a bit of a mess, sadly.

I was really looking forward to this. I thought it was okay. My biggest problem with it is that not much really happened. The reveal was uninspired and easy to guess. Even the videogame itself was dull. The acting was all solid and the squidgy effects were pretty good, shame it was a bit boring.

Didn't have any social commentary to go with the videodrome plotting and ended up a bit of a mess in more ways than one. I also spot a bit of a pattern emerging as the nerdy central characters in beyond the gates also had girlfriends who were well above their batting average. Come on mate, have a word with yourself.